Dairy Generates Electricity

Dairy Generates Electricity

Tim Hammerich
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
With California Ag Today, I’m Tim Hammerich.

A lot of great things come from your local dairy: milk, cheese, and ice cream, just to name a few. But some dairy producers like Modesto-based Brian Fiscalini are also supplying their community with electricity.

Fiscalini… “What we do is we collect the waste from our farm. So we collect all of the cow manure, we collect any spoiled feed, and then we also bring in a few waste streams from other industries that would normally either go into a landfill or would have to travel quite far for someone to be able to process.”

This waste is stored in concrete tanks and the lid captures methane gas.

Fiscalini… “Then what we do is we convert that methane gas, with the help of an internal combustion engine, into electricity. So that electricity is used to power our facility as well as selling electricity to our local utility, which equates to enough power to take care of 300 homes in our community.”

This is one more way that our California farmers are providing us with delicious food, and a whole lot more.

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